historical fraud

In April 1983, the German magazine Stern announced a sensational discovery: Adolf Hitler's private diaries. The publication presented the documents as the world's most sought-after historical artifact, but within weeks the entire story collapsed when experts exposed the diaries as an elaborate forgery created by a single talented counterfeiter.

A Stuttgart-based artist and an ambitious reporter defrauded the world with 60 forged Hitler diaries for 9.3 million DM. The case is called the greatest postwar fraud.